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Facebook went public in May pricing at $38 per share and more than a $100 billion market capitalization. Since then the company’s stock has been beaten down. In July the company posted earnings that disappointed Wall Street. ”The performance of the stock obviously has been disappointing and we care about our shareholders… We do things to build value over the long term,” Zuckerberg said.

People are underestimating Facebook’s potential on mobile, Zuckerberg emphasized. Facebook has the massive user base of more than 900 million. It has engagement, with mobile users spending more time on Facebook than desktop users. And monetization will be be better on Facebook on mobile as well, he said. “They really underestimate how fundamental and good mobile is for us,” he said.

Facebook’s new (much faster) iOS app, users are seeing twice the number of items daily in their News Feed than they did before. As for monetization, Facebook’s ads on desktop on the right hand column have been successful but won’t work on mobile. Now, each of Facebook’s individual product teams on mobile has ownership over monetization of their product, Zuckerberg said. That means there will be new forms of monetization coming. “There’s great monetization being developed. You have to be fundamentally integrated into the product.” These types of mobile ads perform better than the traditional ads on the right hand column on the desktop, he added.

As for a much rumored Facebook phone, Zuckerberg reiterated that there is no phone in the works. “We have a network of 950 million users soon. Say we build a phone–and we’re not. We get 10 million or 20 million people to use it. It doesn’t move the needle for us.”

Zuckerberg was asked about his statement that Facebook doesn’t build service to make money, it makes money to build services. His response? “We’re a mission-driven company… From the very beginning we’ve had a healthy understanding that we do both. The strategy we have is different from every other tech company: Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung. We’re going in the opposite direction.”

As for the company’s lagging stock price, Zuckerberg said employees are used to controversy. “Facebook has not been an un-controversial company in the past,” he said. “What really motivates people at Facebook is building something people can be proud of. Building something 950 million people can be proud of.”

Facebook’s biggest mistake was focusing virtually all its mobile efforts on HTML5, Zuckerberg said. The company decided that instead of native apps on iOS or Android it would focus on letting people access Facebook through a browser. It turned out the performance was not up to standards. The company took six to eight months to build “Face Web,” which was internal infrastructure to publish to the mobile web. Then it spent another four months using it before it decided it was a mistake. Now Facebook is focusing on native apps. Still, Facebook gets more traffic from the mobile web than iOS and Android apps combined.”We burnt two years,” Zuckerberg said. “Probably looking back thats probably one of the biggest if not the biggest mistake. But we’re coming out of that.”

The company has changed its structure recently, Zuckerberg noted. In the past it was organized around a product team for the whole company and an engineering team for the whole company. Now each product has its own engineering team. Each person on groups such as News Feed, Platform, and Identity are in charge of making sure their products are top notch. Zuckerberg himself doesn’t code for Facebook. He does that “on the side.” But because all Facebook code must be maintained by the person who created it, he has opted not to code himself, he said. Facebook has had few major product releases this year, but Zuckerberg said he expected that to pick up soon with more releases to come soon.

As for Instagram, Zuckerberg said he got to know Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom because he likes to get to know Facebook’s top developers. The acquisition enables Instagram to keep doing what it has been doing with the benefit of Facebook’s support.

One area where Zuckerberg dropped big hints was on the topic of a possible Facebook search engine. He said traditional keyword search engines like Google are fine. But Facebook is positioned to give specific answers to questions such as, “What sushi restaurants in New York my friends have gone to in the past month and liked?” Facebook has a team working on this, he said. A Facebook search engine would, of course, be a direct challenge to Google.

Investors seemed to like Zuckerberg’s talk. Facebook’s stock was up 3.4% after hours to $20.09.

The event was Zuckerberg’s first public talk since Facebook’s IPO. The last major public talk he did was at September 2011 at Facebook’s f8 developer conference. Hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors and others packed into a hall in San Francisco to hear Zuckerberg speak at what was most likely the most watched talk at the three-day event. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, is cherishing a sort of underdog role–if a company with billions of dollars could be an underdog. “We go through these waves. At times everyone thinks what we’re doing is awesome and I think it’s too optimistic. At times when people are super pessimistic, I personally–maybe it’s a perverse thing–I’d rather be in a cycle where people underestimate us. It gives us latitude to go out and make big bets and excite and amaze people.”

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Steve Jobs is laughing and finger pointing all the way to Hell Bank! My feeling about HTML5, in music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIBmj2asU6s

My views about it, make sure to read comments and feel free to add to it: http://www.facebook.com/notes/stephane-beladaci/one-code-any-screen-develop-once-deploy-everywhere-is-a-reality/10152672812579068

The lyrics for the song above, if you don’t have time to listen to it:

All the promises we’ve been given All the fires that we’ve feedin’ All the lies that we’ve been livin’ in

All the promises…promises…promises…promises…promises…promises

All the promises we’ve been given, given, given All the fires that we’ve feedin’, feedin’, feedin’ All the lies that we’ve been livin’, livin’, livin’ Am I the only one that’s still believin’

Wouldn’t it be nice if we Could leave behind the mess we’re in Could dig beneath these old troubles return To find something amazing

And Wouldn’t it be cool if we Sail this ship to calmer seas Turn our backs on bush fires burn. Leave it on the coast

All the promises we’ve been given, given, given All the fires that we’ve feedin’, feedin’, feedin’ All the lies that we’ve been livin’, livin’, livin’ Am I the only one that’s still believin’

I can see you’re in it to go I think we knew this day might come I hope you’ll find what we never ooh Could never seem to love But if you find just one reason to return You’ll find me open arms

All the promises we’ve been given, given, given All the fires that we’ve feedin’, feedin’, feedin’ All the lies that we’ve been livin’, livin’, livin’ Am I the only one that’s still believin’